


it's a helluva ride, yeah it's a helluva life

by notthebigspoon



Series: Brandon and Hobbes [16]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 04:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notthebigspoon/pseuds/notthebigspoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2013 is, more or less, a year of disappointment and shattered hopes. Hobbes can’t say that he was expecting the Giants to replicate their 2012 season, that he was expecting Brandon to win another ring, but he was hoping. There’s nothing wrong with hope, though it does have a tendency to hurt you. There were other things that Hobbes had dared to hope for and those things hadn’t materialized either.</p><p>Title taken from Helluva Life by Frankie Ballard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's a helluva ride, yeah it's a helluva life

2013 is, more or less, a year of disappointment and shattered hopes. Hobbes can’t say that he was expecting the Giants to replicate their 2012 season, that he was expecting Brandon to win another ring, but he was hoping. There’s nothing wrong with hope, though it does have a tendency to hurt you. There were other things that Hobbes had dared to hope for and those things hadn’t materialized either.

In spite of that one beautiful day during Spring Training, when he’d gotten to watch an entire game from the dugout, he still hasn’t gone beyond the clubhouse of AT&T Park. He sits in the corner of his best friend’s locker, or in Braylyn’s arms, and watches the world pass him by. All he wants it to watch Brandon play for real, to walk the bases and sit at shortstop.

Theriot is gone and with him went Sanchez’s happiness. The guy is so depressed these days. Lincecum is crushed over Wilson’s signing with the Dodgers. Barry won’t be back next year, which means Amber will be gone too, which means he’ll have to learn to live without his _other_ best friend. The only person in their house that’s unequivocally happy is Brandon. He deserves it. Hobbes doesn’t say anything. He wouldn’t win Brandon’s happiness for anything, not after all that he’s been through on Hobbes’s account.

When the postseason rolls around and they’ve brushed off the disappointment of not making it, postseason plans are made. Buster wants them in Georgia with him and Brandon agrees. Hobbes endures a flight and then a car ride stuffed in Brandon’s suitcase. Even once they actually reach Leesburg, he doesn’t get an overwhelming amount of freedom. Brandon and Buster have to scout and make sure that the back yard has enough privacy for him to rome around, and then there’s dealing with all the people that are always dropping in.

After spending the first two weeks holed up in the attic, he ventures down to the lower floors. The house is large, airy and clear and so very Buster. It’s a family home, for a _real_ family, something they’ve never had before. Hobbes wonders if it’s safe for him to be a part of all of this. What if he screws it up for Brandon? For Buster? What if he becomes too much of a hassle? He’s always going to have to be careful, because of him. That’s not fair to them.

As some sort of imagined compensation for the trouble he’s causing them, and he can’t imagine how it’d do them any good, he volunteers to watch the kids while Buster and Brandon have some quiet time. Watching the kids amounts to a blanket in the back yard for Bray to roll around on while the twins trot around on legs that are sometimes still a bit wobbly. They don’t seem to find it the least bit strange that their babysitter is a six hundred pound jungle cat.

They talk to him, defer to him, as if he’s any other adult in their lives. Even his best growls don’t seem to phase them, something evidenced by Hobbes growling and sprinting after Lee when the boy runs away as fast as his chubby legs will carry him. Hobbes hooks his teeth into the toddler’s pants, gently lifting him and carrying him back to the blanket, thumping him down with an order to stay put.

Hobbes moves to a far corner of the blanket, turns himself in a few circles before laying out and resting his head on his folded paws. He’s too old for this crap. A tug on his ear makes him growl again and he cracks an eye, peering up at Addy.

“Yes?”

“How?” She asks, staring at him expectantly, looking a little exasperated when an answer is not forthcoming. “How old?”

Hobbes frowns. “Me? Dunno. Maybe twenty three.”

“ _Old_.”

“Ancient.” Hobbes answers gravely, licking her face and watching her tumble onto the blanket. She stays there nexts to Braylyn, drifts off into a nap of her own.

As much as Hobbes loves the kids, he loves the silence now that all three of them are asleep even more. He looks over them and up at the house, sighing before thumping his head back down on his paws. _Is_ he old? How old is he? He doesn’t really know, he’s always put his best guess at around Brandon’s age but he knows that’s off by a few years or more.

The facts are these. Brandon got Hobbes, brand new from the store, for his birthday when he was three years old. Hobbes’s first memory is of Brandon, of that party. They’d gone to bed that night and Brandon had had a bad dream. His parents had laughed at him the next day when he told them that Hobbes had chased the monsters away. They thought it was cute.

For a few years, they’d thought nothing of it. All kids have imaginary friends and they were occupied with their own messes, the constant fighting and screaming. Hobbes doesn’t know how many nights he spent huddled up in the closet with Brandon, pretending they couldn’t hear the fights, the things smashing. Somehow, when Brandon’s sisters came along, that changed everything… appearance wise, and between his parents. It didn’t change for Brandon.

Brandon was the subject of a good deal of their wrath, all because of Hobbes, because they thought that Brandon was crazy. He remembers in vivid detail the day that it all came to a head, just a few days after Brandon’s fourteenth birthday. They’d been watching Little Rascals when the goon squad had arrived, taking Brandon to the hospital by force. Hobbes had had to listen to his screaming and crying from the clutches of Brandon’s mom’s hand. The two years spent in the attic, locked away in that musty old trunk, are a vivid nightmare. He’d heard Brandon’s screams every day in the back of his mind. There never was any escaping it.

He wonders what life would be like for Brandon if he had never came snooping through the attic that weekend that his parents had been away. He’d probably still have baseball. He’d had that from when he was little and it had became everything, the only thing that made him remotely normal. The medication had always left him foggy and a little dumb, he’d said, but he could still play.

Would he have played well enough, though? Would he have gotten the scholarship to UCLA? Would the Giants have drafted him? Would he still have met Jalynne? There’s no way of knowing. But Brandon _did_ tell Hobbes that if it were not for Hobbes, he never would have stopped taking the medication. And Hobbes knows Brandon better than anyone else on the planet. He never would have been happy. He wouldn’t have been _Brandon_.

In spite of his failed marriage, in spite of his stranded relationship with his parents, Brandon is a happy person. _Very_ happy, all bright eyes and big smiles. Every milestone in his life, every great thing that happened… he always told Hobbes first if he could and he couldn’t truly enjoy anything _until_ Hobbes knew. He told Hobbes so their first night they had Bray all to themselves.

He climbs to his feet, circles the blanket and gently nudges each sleeping child into the center of it. They tumbles end over end, never waking for a moment and it sends him into a hysterical gigglefit as he settles down and curls himself around them. 

Thinking back, the disappointments of this season are nothing that he can’t live with. There’s always next year. As long as Brandon is still in the show, all of those opportunities are still there. And even when it’s all over, the lost opportunities, for Hobbes, won’t _really_ matter all that much. When you have someone to love that loves you, the other things don’t matter so much. And he’ll always have Brandon. Everything else in the world might come and go but they’ll always have each other.

His eyes have only just drifted shut when he hears the back door of the house open and then shut. He can smell Buster and Brandon (freshly showered, _naughty_ ) before they actually reach him. They’re a few inches away, leaning down to pick up the kids, when he growls at them, long and low. Buster snorts and Brandon smothers a laugh.

“We know, we know, they’re your babies.”

“Damn cat needs to learn to share.” Buster mutters, but it’s fond and his hand rubs the top of Hobbes’s head before he’s sitting down next to them. “Up for a ride? Took the last row of seats out of the Suburban, should be pretty comfortable.”

Hobbes eyes him. “The answer to that question rests upon whether or not you removed those seats so I would fit, or so the two of you could be dirty in it.”

“We don’t have sex in the Suburban.” Brandon answers with a scandalized expression. “That’s what the truck is for!”

Well. Hobbes pretty much asked for that information. He makes a face at the both of them, hops up and helps them rouse the kids before following them inside. The children are dressed and bundled into the already loaded Suburban. Even with ice chests and a pile of blankets, Hobbes is reasonably comfortable, resting his hand on the center seat and watching the scenery whizz by.

Ten minutes out of town and they leave the county road for a dirt one, rumbling along and kicking up dust. Buster exits the car at one stop, unhooks and rolls back a span of barbed wire that he drives through and then fastens back into place. The trees arch over the road. It’s dark and gloomy. Hobbes finds himself humming Dueling Banjos and fielding a dirty look from Buster.

It’s only another few miles before he gets it. The road opens up to a wide field awash in sunlight. There’s a log barn at the far end, a tumbledown house in the center. It’s beautiful and the second Brandon opens the back door of the car, Hobbes is sprinting out to tear around the field. He can’t remember the last time he had an opportunity like this, to just run around without worrying if he’ll be seen by the wrong people.

He stops when he sees a well, pulling himself up and peeping down into it at the faint glimmer of water far below. A glance back shows Buster and Brandon hefting out the coolers, spreading the blankets and arranging the kids. They start lifting food out of the ice chests and Hobbes licks his chops when he sees a bag of Doritos. He’s willing to bet one of those plates has a stack of tuna sandwiches.

That’s _his_ family… and his sandwiches. He hops down from the well and sprints back to them. Somehow, he knows that the whole picture isn’t complete without him in it, and that’s the best feeling in the world.


End file.
